April 9 (Bloomberg) -- The 12th crew to live aboard the International Space Station landed safely on Earth today after six months aboard the orbiting outpost, accompanied by Brazil's first astronaut.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Expedition 12 Commander William McArthur, flight engineer Valery Tokarev and Brazilian astronaut Marcos Pontes landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan at about 7:48 p.m. New York time.

Pontes flew to the station last week with Expedition 13 Commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeff Williams, who are scheduled to stay aboard the outpost until October. European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter is set to join Vinogradov and Williams later this year, giving the crew a third member for the first time since May 2003.

The crew size was reduced to two people after Columbia's destruction, as NASA has relied on smaller Russian spacecraft to carry people and cargo to the outpost. Reiter, of Germany, is scheduled to fly on Discovery, which is currently to take off in July on the second shuttle mission since Columbia was destroyed.

Assembly is also scheduled to resume later this year. Construction has been halted since the destruction of Columbia three years ago and NASA is trying to finish assembly by 2010 to meet commitments to its 15 international partners and comply with President George W. Bush's space strategy.

Seventeen missions are planned before the shuttle is retired in 2010 as called for in President George W. Bush's plan for NASA -- 16 for assembly of the International Space Station and one for servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. Construction is currently scheduled to resume in the second of the next two shuttle flights.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 8, 2006 20:05 EDT